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Irish Stew

A stew of mutton, onion, turnips, potatoes, pepper, salt, and water, cooked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Irish Stew

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Irish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the mutton pieces in a jar.

  2. Add the onion, turnips, and potatoes.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Pour a little water at the bottom of the jar.

Cook

  1. Place the jar in boiling water and boil for two hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the main meat flavour, and its fat and collagen add richness and body to the stew.
Potatoes
Their starch softens as they cook and slightly thickens the liquid around them.
Onion
Cooking softens its sharp bite and adds a savoury, aromatic sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Boiling for two hours. Mutton is a tough cut with plenty of connective tissue. Long, steady cooking breaks down its collagen into gelatin, which makes the meat tender and gives the broth body. Cutting the stop short leaves the meat chewy.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, potato, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, potato, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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